


On Black Holes, Miracles, Singularities, and Nothingness.

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-20
Updated: 2005-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Charles Wallace was four, he discovered black holes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Black Holes, Miracles, Singularities, and Nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lucy Gillam

 

 

 **spoilers:** For all the books, especially A Wind in the Door. The entire Murray/O'Keefe and Austin canon is fair game.

 **notes:** Set sometime before The Arm of the Starfish. I tried to keep the story true to the books' time period, so this happens sometime in the mid-late seventies, if I've done my math correctly.

*

When Charles Wallace was four, he discovered black holes.

Inevitably, first he had discovered mortality. For a week it was non-stop, "Where do trees go when they die?" (Back into the earth to help new trees grow.) "Where do we go when we die?" (Heaven.) And then, "Where do stars go when they die?"

Father sat Charles Wallace down and told him about black holes. "Stars get smaller and smaller until they collapse on themselves and release huge amounts of energy. And this energy creates what is called a black hole. Its gravity is so strong - you remember gravity," Charles Wallace nodded, "- that it starts to pull everything around it inside. The surface of the black hole is called an event horizon, and once you cross it, you can never come out. Nothing can come out, not even light. That's why they are called black holes."

"So something turns into nothing?"

"Well, in a way, yes." Father rubbed Charles Wallace's hair. "But that doesn't happen to us. We don't turn into nothing."

Charles Wallace looked at him with his big blue eyes. "I know." He slid off his father's lap. "Good-night, Father."

"Good night, Charles Wallace."

That night Charles Wallace didn't dream of stars, or trees, or the ocean, which he had never seen. He dreamt of a giant vacuum, sitting in space, sucking in all the light around it. He awoke from the dream and it was still night, so he went up the stairs to the attic and crawled into bed with Meg. She slid aside to make room for him.

"You okay?"

"Just thinking." And he fell asleep in his sister's bed, her arm wrapped protectively around his chest.

*

"It's a boy." Charles Wallace had his hands on his sister's warm belly.

"How do you know that? We're only five weeks along!"

He shrugged and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. "I just do."

Meg laughed, and he loved her laugh. "Well, if it is a boy, we'll name him after you, in honor of your scary deductive skills."

"Are you sure Calvin will go for that?"

"As long as we don't name the baby Calvin, he'll be fine with anything. I've never met a man so set against naming a child after himself."

Charles Wallace played with the tablecloth. He remembered Mrs. Whatsit folding the pleats of her skirt and going, This is a tesseract.

"Why don't we kythe anymore, Meg? Do you and Calvin?"

Meg sighed and settled herself down at a chair opposite him.

"No, not really. Sometimes we'll know things, without having to tell the other, but it's not like when we were with - well, before."

He noticed his sister's hesitation at mentioning Progo; even after all these years, she still had not forgiven the universe for making him X himself. They had countless arguments ("It was free will, Meg, Progo didn't have to do anything." "He was GOOD, Charles Wallace, and good doesn't just let bad exist. He didn't have a choice or he wouldn't be good anymore." "Don't you see that that itself is a choice?" "I'm tired, Charles Wallace, I'm just so tired of this world.") but that was years ago, and now Meg surrounded herself with life, filled herself with it, swam in it with Calvin, and Charles Wallace stayed with his books and his numbers and black holes and infinitely expanding universe.

"I try to get you sometimes, but you're never there."

"Oh, baby brother, it takes so much energy, you know, and with all the kids I'm so tired all the time. And I never know when to turn in."

He looked at her across the table, her chestnut chair spilling across her forehead. "I'm always listening."

Meg reached out and clasped his hand. "I know." She sighed. "It's just, we've all grown up, haven't we?"

And he doesn't tell her about how Gaudior visits him in dreams, how he's always thinking about kything and Progo and the terribleness of IT, how every day he's reminded the battle of good and evil continues. He lets her escape to this island off of Portugal, and surround herself with beautiful loving things, and he lets her think the world will be safe for her children. They are safe now, anyway, and that's all that matters.

"I should go."

"You aren't going to stay for dinner? Joshua normally does."

"I have a flight to catch," he said, which wasn't entirely true.

They both stood, and Meg burst into tears. "Look at you, so big and grown up. Living alone in New York. I worry about you, Charles Wallace."

"Just kythe to me, Meg. I'll answer."

She sniffled. "Be safe. Say hello to Canon Tallis for us. Especially Polly."

He smiled. "I will. Take care of yourself. And prepare yourself for another little boy."

"Just what the world needs!" Meg laughed, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes.

Charles Wallace gathered his things, and walked out the door. He called to Joshua, and they headed for the plane.

*

He was thinking about black holes. In a world, universe, that was constantly expanding, constantly creating, something was turning that creation into nothingness. Could black holes be considered evil? What did happen when you crossed the event horizon?

Charles Wallace had been to different times, different planets, different dimensions, but there had always been something.

He took the subway to 110th street. As he walked the short distance to the St. John the Divine, he thought about his Father saying, _but that doesn't happen to us._ And it's not that Charles Wallace didn't believe in heaven, because he did with all his heart, it was that he wasn't quite so sure about hell.

Canon Tallis once said hell was simply the absence of God, and Charles Wallace wondered if that gave new meaning to the term "hell on earth." There were certainly atheists around him; in science, you must be a believer, but his colleagues chose to believe in theories and facts. Yes, they could admit that things were beautiful, but not divine, and Charles Wallace saw the divine in everything. And when he couldn't, well, that's when he got scared and wished he could climb the stairs to Meg's attic, or have Mother make cocoa on her Bunsen burner.

But he was a grown-up now, with a grown-up life and grown-up responsibilities, and he started to think he needed to stop dreaming of unicorns.

The Cathedral seemed empty, with a few tourists standing over the Poet's Corner, and one little boy running from golden seal to golden seal. He looked up at the huge arches and felt his heart swell with something indescribable. That was why he came, for that feeling of being so small, yet so whole. It was his favorite place to think, on the wicker chairs, sometimes organ music filling the Cathedral to the brim. It was where he ran when he was afraid, because he could feel there, something larger than himself, something larger than the world he inhabited, the universe he studied.

He went to find Canon Tallis. He had a letter from Polly he promised to deliver as soon as possible, and Charles Wallace always kept his promises.

*

His apartment was small, a one bedroom that he supposed was superfluous, but he liked having a special place to work. He could see Central Park from the far window on the left, and he placed a chair in front of it so he could sit and look at the trees.

It wasn't that he didn't like the city. Charles Wallace surprised himself by loving New York, with its crowded sidewalks and dirty subways, its prostitutes and churches. Anyone could live in New York, he thought, and he liked being a part of that.

Sometimes, though, it was all a little too much, with the mentally ill sprawled in doorways, the homeless begging for money, the incompetent city government, the druggies on the corners, the graffiti underground. Sometimes Charles Wallace feared for humanity, despite all the good he knew existed, and he would sit in his chair and stare at the Park and think about how someone took the time to create such a lovely oasis in the middle of the concrete island. How the city realized that beauty was important, natural beauty, and it created this.

And he thought of the universe, and he thought of the life he had seen on other planets, and he wondered how anyone could ever think the world was so small as to only contain humans.

*

He was dreaming in black and white when he suddenly saw his sister. She was vibrantly alive against the drab backdrop, and he thought briefly of _The Wizard of Oz._

"I'm scared," she said, running her hands through her hair. "I don't know if I'm doing this right. I forget, but the baby, Charles Wallace, the baby might not be okay . . ."

And he was awake, and he was kything to her, _it will all be alright. I'm on my way. I'm coming. I love you._

Charles Wallace kythed his love.

He grabbed his coat and left for JFK without packing.

*

There's a theory about black holes, about the inside of them. That there's something called a singularity, a point when spacetime becomes infinite, and the gravitational pull becomes infinitely strong.

Charles Wallace believed in the infinite. And he believed in the manipulability of time.

But having a singularity still doesn't explain what happens when you cross the event horizon. It doesn't explain how something can become nothing.

He thought about black holes when he was worried, and he thought about creation and destruction, and how in the case of black holes, destruction seems to inevitably win. How can you compete against an infinitely strong force of gravity? And yet, the universe isn't a zero sum situation. It's still creating, expanding, radiating outward. Stars are being born, the universe giving birth to another galaxy. And who is to say this universe is the only one?

Charles Wallace felt small when he thought about black holes, but he never felt inconsequential. After all, he would never turn into nothing.

He wondered if he grew up too quickly, too strangely, given such responsibility at such young ages. And now he is grown, and he is reduced to dreams of the past to remind him that there are things beyond himself, beyond his imagination.

Meg let go of the dreams; Meg immersed herself in the present. Charles Wallace imagined Calvin was somewhere in between - something is driving his passion for science and discovery.

But Meg remembered how to kythe. And Charles Wallace was going to her, like he promised, streaming through the air on an ordinary plane in ordinary time.

*

He heard Meg before the wheels hit the ground, _I hate hospitals. I'm scared, Charles Wallace, so scared._

So he knew they had left the island, which meant things had to be bad. All Meg's other children were delivered by a mid-wife. He wondered how Calvin was.

He grabbed his coat and emerged from the airport into the sweaty air of Portugal. He hailed a cab, and headed to the hospital.

 _I'm here_ , he kythed, _I'm right here._

*

"I could feel you," she said between gasps. "I'd forgotten, I was afraid I wouldn't remember how, oh, I'm so happy you're here." The ugly florescent light cast a dim shadow on Meg's face.

"He's coming too soon." Charles Wallace placed his hand on Meg's swollen belly.

"Yes, and Calvin had to stay with the children, and I hate hospitals. The smell, they have to scrub so hard to try and keep death away. There's so much death."

He looked around the room, empty and drab. The walls were a dingy yellow, as if the hospital tried to bring some light into the place, but failed. Instead it just looked sad, if a room could look sad. Charles Wallace turned to his sister.

"But you're about to give birth, Meg. The opposite of death."

"It could die," Meg stated with a confidence Charles Wallace didn't think she had. "It's probably going to die. It's too soon." Her voice started to take a frantic edge. "I don't know what happened, everything was fine and then suddenly I'm having contractions and -"

He grabbed his sister's hand. "Shhh. He's going to be just fine. He's just a little anxious to see the world, is all. I can't really blame him. It's a pretty incredible place."

"Still insisting it's a boy, huh?" Meg clenched her teeth, knuckles white with pain. "You're always so calm and confident. How do you do it?"

Before he could answer, she gave a loud cry, and tried to double up in pain. "I'm so scared, so scared."

"We're all taken care of, Meg. It will be fine. It's going to be hard, but it will be fine. You'll see. And you're far enough along for this baby to make it. It's just a little early, is all. He just wants to say hello to his beautiful mother."

A nurse came in and took Meg's blood pressure. She glanced at Meg's cervix. "Almost time. I'll call the doctor."

And then Charles Wallace was in scrubs, and Meg was screaming, and he kythed his love to her, over and over again.

*

"4 pounds, 2 ounces. Charles Wallace, I'd like you to meet Charles Wallace." Meg was beaming.

He held his breath. The baby was sleeping peacefully. "He's beautiful, Meg. Look at those fingers. I've never seen anything so small."

"I need to call Calvin, he's probably worried sick -" She started to move as if she were going to simply get up and find a pay phone. Charles Wallace stopped her.

"He's on his way. Joshua's watching the children."

He didn't tell her he kythed to Calvin, too, that that's how the Calvin first found out he was a father again. Kything with Calvin was different; it was more direct and intense. Meg was looser, calmer, he was always afraid he was going to lose her. But Calvin clearly remembered, and was thankful. And now he was on his way, and it was time for Charles Wallace to leave. He was never one to really stick around.

He bent down and kissed his namesake, and his sister's forehead.

"Oh, don't leave. You just got here! You haven't even seen your other nieces and nephews yet. Polly will kill you if you leave without saying hello."

He smiled at the thought of the children, and turned to grab his coat.

"I have papers to grade. I came on the spur of the moment, you know." He grinned.

"I know, I shouldn't have taken you away, I mean, you have your own life and I just selfishly wanted you here in mine because I was afraid and -"

Charles Wallace cut her off. "If you hadn't kythed, I would have been angry. I'm glad I could come. Any excuse to see my big sister, especially if I get a namesake out of the deal."

She reached for his hand. "I couldn't have done it without you."

"Yes, you could have. But I'm glad I was here, too."

He took a deep breath in this room filled with life, not the death that Meg was so scared of. Hospitals didn't scare him. Not much scared him. Even when he was young, he was absurdly mature (so his parents told him). But nothingness - and well, it wasn't the time to think of Progo, especially in front of Meg. It was time for rejoicing, not singularities.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, baby brother."

He left the room. On his way out he passed Calvin, who grabbed his arm and stared at him with shining eyes. "Thank you."

Charles Wallace laughed. "Get in there. Your new son is beautiful."

"Be sure to come back soon." And Calvin disappeared inside the hospital.

As he sat on the plane trying to fall asleep, for he hadn't slept since he left New York, he thought about miracles. The new Charles Wallace was a miracle. And miracles, however small, were happening all over the world. He looked out the window at the stars, and pushed away thoughts of black holes, and instead thought of a new star being born, the burst of energy, the fire and flame, the heat radiating, the light speeding toward him. He imagined a star being born right that instant, and he quietly whispered hello.

*

He pulled his father's book on singularities down from the shelf, along with the worn copy of Hawking.

Charles Wallace meant to be grading papers, but ever since he left Portugal, all he could think of was Progo, and what happened to him when he Xed himself. Was it really possible to become nothing?

A singularity caused the object that crossed the event horizon to be pulled in different directions, called tidal waves. The process was called spaghettification, which even now made Charles Wallace smile. So at that point, there was still something, something changing form, being stretched at unimaginable angles and lengths.

But what then? What happened when you hit the singularity? When you reached the infinite in timespace? Canon Tallis called God the infinite. Could you truly never escape God? Was a black hole simply another way to the divine, a way for the universe instead of humans?

He had to clear his head. He reached for a stack of papers, and found a note from one of his students, Vicky Austin. She was clearly just taking his class to fulfill a requirement; not that she wasn't smart, but her papers were full of beautiful prose, not scientific language of his chosen academic world.

"Dear Professor Murray,

I just wrote this and thought I would share it with you, since you inspired it. I hope you like it. I know my paper is still too flowery, but sometimes you just can't change yourself, you know?

Thanks. I hope you like it.

Vicky Austin."

He turned the page to a poem. Her hand-writing was deliberate and careful, as if she was really worried about what he thought of the poem. He was touched already. How his students could surprise him.

_It started from nothing  
(so the theory goes)  
and then exploded in a blast of color and matter_

__

 

_The stars all spin through space  
Time metamorphoses  
We watch the world around us unravel_

__

 

_Death in Cambodia  
Horror on the streets of New York  
Disillusionment with the whole of humanity_

__

 

_But out of nothing came something  
And out of destruction comes creation  
Because despite all we go on._

__

 

_I find a miracle in the leaves regrowing every year  
Despite the fact they must die in winter  
The tree never gives up, older and wiser than me_

__

 

_In a world with love  
(which this is, despite appearances)  
there can never be nothing._

 

Charles Wallace rubbed his temples with his fingers. How answers could come from the most random places, when you least expect it. This was his answer - Progo wasn't nothing, he was loved, he was loved by Meg and Charles Wallace and Calvin, and that made him something despite the fact they couldn't see him anymore, despite the fact he didn't quite exist.

Vicky was right. Out of destruction comes creation, and out of love comes something.

And Charles Wallace loved.

 

 

 


End file.
